Withered compliant local constituency parties

pIf Salford Constituency Labour Party let Hazel Blears off the hook, surely someone living in that constituency with Facebook account could find a hundred-or-so like minds?/ppHave you seen? She's added to her ludicrous cheque-waving apology with a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/blears-faces-censure-despite-walkout-apology-1703691.html"another one/a - this time in the Manchester Evening News./ppAgain, before I continue, by way of mitigation, let me invite you to use the search box on this site to confirm that I've been one of the blogosphere's few cheerleaders for Ms Blears./ppWhere were we? Oh yes. Hazel has said 'sorry', and her senior constituency party officials have urged everyone to em'move on'/em. /ppNothing illustrates the problem more than this does./ppHer wider CLP may not be so tame, but this is a high profile case, so the exception kinda proves the rule here: Constituency parties have given MPs a soft ride for far too long, allowing them to conduct their constituency business without much scrutiny, and allowing them to put the need for 'party unity' em(trans: a easy life and a promising career)/em above their need to be independent-minded representatives./ppIt is the job of the constituency party to keep the MP decent - a job that hasbeen all-but abandoned in a lot of cases./ppMost CLPs have been diminished in number over the past twenty years. Party reforms have reduced all means of challenging the orthodoxy on matters of policy and direction down to nothing. /ppNow, I'd argue that there is a strong case for MPs to be the main channels for empolicymakin/ememg/em, and that there are good reasons why members should only have a limited ability to intervene forcefully and directly on specific policy matters. /ppBut local parties need to have a more emadversarial/em relationship with their MPs than they do. They should be demanding that MPs account for the tame way that they have conducted their parliamentary business - and the kind of people who would have given Ms Blears a hard time have long-since left the party./ppBeing able to conduct a debate among party members while asserting one's independence and (Parliamentary) privileges is - as far as I can see - one of the baseline skills needed to be a good MP. /ppBut many local parties have been reduced to being a couple of dozen nodding dogs, with a slightly larger group of members who haven't seen the point of getting directly involved in their CLP for years./ppThe current crisis of representation underlines the need for every CLP to pull their candidate over the coals in the next couple of months. It also underlines the need for more new members - and this doesn't just apply to Labour either./ppOh, have I mentioned 'a href="http://www.reselect.org/"reselect.org/a' yet? /pdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/12478668-5708206555176735893?l=nevertrustahippy.blogspot.com'//div

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